By volume, oil spills inland and in gulf second only to Exxon Valdez

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CHALMETTE, La. — Tim and Nicole Moody remember their shock at returning home with a video camera for the first time after Katrina.

Tim can be heard crying off camera as he narrates, "This is our bedroom."

The Moodys were shocked not just because of the hurricane's impact, but because their home, like thousands of others along the lower Mississippi, was also soaked in oil.

"Across the southern part of the state as a whole, in excess of 9 million gallons of oil was spilled," says Dwight Bradshaw with the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality.

It's a spill second only in American history to the 11 million-gallon Exxon Valdez spill in 1989. Actually, it's more than 40 separate spills from ruptured pipelines and crumpled storage tanks. But because the spills cover a much wider area and are part of the larger Katrina story of disaster and recovery, they're getting much less attention.

Except from homeowners like Jeff Duggan of Chalmette.

"It has to be embedded in my soil, and has to be behind my bricks," he says. "Can it be pressure-washed? Do they have the solution to clean it?"